The survival horror genre has been one of the seminal genres of gaming for as long as I can remember. People love to be scared, and games are one of the best mediums to do so. Thus, enter Blooper Team who have rolling out a variety of different horror games over the the past few years including last year with the remake of the acclaimed Silent Hill 2. Now, they are back again releasing their next game in the genre just ahead of spooky season with Cronos: The New Dawn.  This one is another entry that is completely different than Blooper Team’s other releases, but let’s see how it sits alongside the mainstays in the genre.

Blooper Team delves into sci-fi horror with Cronos: The New Dawn with heavy inspiration from the likes of Dead Space and Resident Evil. You can see its inspirations everywhere you look as you make your way through the game. There are you quasi safe rooms akin where you can make upgrades and access your storage, environmental storytelling that clues you in about the enemies, and plenty of time adjusting your limited inventory space (which you definitely want to constantly upgrade) as you go along these decently sized areas you explore.

The story of Cronos: The New Dawn starts out extremely strong. You awaken as one of the Travelers and venture into the world in the far future after a devastating epidemic known as “The Change” has wiped out all life aside from us, mutated creatures known as the Orphans, and surprisingly cats. Your goal is to find what happened to your predecessor and continue on their mission of jumping back in time to uncover the the source of the disease. Such is our calling.  The time jumping has you searching for a specific target each time you go back into the past to save them from the disease, and you first time you “rescue” someone catches you completely off guard with how its done. However, as the story progresses, it loses some of the awe, intrigue and tension, and will leave some with a “Wait what is happening now?” kind of feeling.

It also feels like Blooper Team only scratches the surface of the sci-fi setting in Cronos: The New Dawn. It feels far more grounded than you would expect a game with time jumping and mutated creatures strewn about. You are only given a handful of weapons through the game with the majority just being off shoots of your typical survival horror loadout. There’s only really one truly sci-fi type weapon in the game, and it’s completely missable. The same aspect can be said about the overall environments in the game. While there are some times you get to see some interesting sci-fi warped things like gravity manipulated areas or a building split in half floating, most of the time you are just going through dark, barren areas that have a hazy fog in the background. Even a time of day change throughout the story could’ve changed up the environments enough to not make them all feel so samey especially because one area stood out from the rest of the game as it has a stark difference is color compared to the rest of the areas you visit.

Where the story will falter for some, the combat is where Cronos: The New Dawn shines. While not as terrifying as say Necromorphs, the Orphans provide probably some of the most difficult challenge in a survival horror game. You are overwhelmed so easily in this game so you have to manage your engagements with enemies carefully. The Orphans can absorb a lot of damage, so most of your weapons have a charge shot feature by holding down the “Fire” button that will deal additional damage.The characters you rescue can also provide additional buffs to your combat prowess as you can have 3 characters “equipped” at a time and they may provide bonuses such as your shotgun doing more damage when hitting multiple enemies or dealing more dame to enemies that are on fire.

Though this isn’t what makes Orphans scary and difficult to fight. It’s that they can merge with their fallen brethren to enhance themselves and become far tougher and can have additional abilities such as spewing a poison spit at you.  Thus, not only do you have to pay attention to multiple enemies at once, you have to stop them from merging with the ones you defeat at the same time. You can do this by wither burning the corpses on the ground with your handy torch (that you have a limited supply of) or killing all the Orphans before they can merge.

Overall, Cronos: The New Dawn is a good entry in the survival horror space, but doesn’t hit the same level as its inspirations do. The Orphans are an fun enemy especially due to the merge mechanic making fights more challenging. However, the lack of varied environments and weapons for the sci-fi setting, and a story that starts out super interesting but doesn’t really come together in a satisfying way leaves the game feeling as if it could have been so much more.

Score: 7 out of 10

Reviewed on PlayStation 5